March in Country (25 page)
Authors: EE Knight
A threat to sell derelicts to the Amazons might even improve march discipline. Certainly there wouldn’t be any stragglers.
Captain Patel had put in two years as a corporal running reconnaissance in that region, and Valentine had been across it off and on ever since Operation Javelin was in the planning stages. Between Lambert’s sensible orders and her subordinate’s experience they should be able to cross in peace. If not, they had the guns to fight the underequipped natives. The Amazons considered Southern Command’s forces minor enemies, territory for an occasional raid, compared to the major enemies in the northern part of Illinois or the gray Grogs across the river in Missouri. Attempted genocide tended to leave an impression on the genocidees.
But all that would take time. Lambert expected the hundred-fifty-mile march from New Harmony to take two weeks without fighting, and double or triple that if the Amazons proved hostile.
They’d have to live on WHAM!, flatbread, and Kentucky molasses, and possibly a culled legworm or two, but with a little luck spring vegetables could be found.
Valentine would take Ahn-Kha and a handful of others as part of “Force Light.” They would go ahead and, using Dizzy Bee, the sole operational airplane at Evansville’s former International Airport, and fly to a small Southern Command field Lambert had used when she forcibly “recruited” Valentine into her Special Operations force three years ago.
He could stay up all night counting the miles he’d travelled since reconnecting with his old schoolmate across that conference table.
Valentine would gather those Golden Ones willing to take a chance and move east across Missouri. There was a wide swath of no-man’s-land there, patrolled by the Iowans and Grog tribes. Southern Command should be able to start them off well supplied, Lambert had already requested the rice and beans, and the Golden Ones had their own stores and herds, he imagined.
As the days to departure ticked off, Valentine looked forward to the relief of being in country. The endless details and questions coming at all but the night watch hours—he volunteered to pull duty at the base security and communication center so he could get caught up on his paperwork—maddened and exhausted.
Ex-Quislings were terrified of taking initiative. Even the small force remaining at the base had been thrown into a panic by the thought of being abandoned by Duvalier, Patel, and Valentine.
He squeezed himself, Ahn-Kha and Bee, Frat, and a trio of Wolves, two with communications ratings, Chieftain the Bear, and their assorted gear into the cabin along with Pellwell and her ratbits in their two big carriers.
Duvalier had come too, a slight figure wrapped in her coat at the very back of the plane, riding next to a seat carrying a duffel bag filled with Chieftain’s guns, Valentine’s Type Three strapped in between the two like a thin commuter making room. Valentine had lost the struggle with her, she told him in private that she’d simply tag along around Force Heavy somewhere.
Valentine knew luck figured into everything. Every time he’d had Duvalier along, somehow they’d found their way through to some mixture of survival and success and satisfaction. They combined, despite their differences, on some basic level like salt and pepper.
Bee, with her one eye full of fierce devotion, would pine like a loyal bluetick left home while the rest of the men and dogs went out for a hunt.
At least if she were under his eye he could make sure she slept and ate.
“You won’t blow it for lack of muscle,” Lambert said to him as she hung on the door. Outside the pilot walked around the plane with his mechanic, doing a final check. The wind sock showed a stiff breeze straight out of the west.
Valentine relished his role of navigator, even if the grizzled Evansville pilot gave him the controls in order to pour a cup of coffee from a red Thermos.
Valentine had learned to fly during a brief spell with Pyp’s Flying Circus in the Southwest, and this was his first opportunity to be in the air since he’d left his autogyro, a parting gift from the officer whose life he’d saved, outside Seattle. The Evansville pilot, who went by the handle “Wizard,” mostly told stories about all the fun he’d had shuttling higher-level Quislings around the Northwest Ordnance. The only interesting passages in three hours’ worth of remembrances of liquor and ladies of his glory days were a few details about the Quisling who used to own the great Audubon Estate, now the almost garishly lavish headquarters of the Legion.
“Old man Cass made his money in coal and timber from the knobs. Plus he was one of the partners who originally developed WHAM! After his plant opened up in E-ville, he fixed up his piece of Henderson and set up with the nicest ass he could find between here and Pennsylvania. She popped out a few kids to keep up appearances and stay in the good graces of the Church, but none of them grew up worth anything. That’s how it usually is with those captains of industry.”
“You wouldn’t know where he is now?” Valentine asked.
“Would I? I flew him out personally. He’s up on the Michigan shore now living on some other industrialist’s charity. Pisses him off that one of his kids is probably sweeping your floors.”
“I thought they all fled?”
“Slim Jim Cass was one of the Evansville club-spinners. Of course, even when on duty, the spinning was at the local strip joint off River Row. He joined up with you guys to keep from getting hung.”
Valentine didn’t remember anyone named Cass in the command. He wouldn’t be surprised if the Quisling had taken the name of a dead comrade or made something up. Still, the factoid troubled him. He took out his order book and made a note to contact Lambert about it.
Dizzy Bee struck weather over the Mississippi, making Valentine glad he wasn’t at the controls. The pilot looked at the approaching cloud line, gave a verdict: “Not that bad,” and altered course a little south in hopes of either sliding along the front or getting a little more distance should they be forced to set down.
In the end, the pilot picked a spot and plunged through. Valentine had a few bad minutes, wondering if his bumpy career would come to an even bumpier end.
Ahn-Kha made a terrifying howl, followed by a long wretch, followed by an even more terrifying smell. Valentine had forgotten to tell his friend to breakfast off something that wouldn’t smell too bad should it come back up.
Suddenly the whole plane went wet with a loud smack of rain and the air steadied.
“Yeah,” the pilot commented. “We’ll be fine.”
Valentine noted that aircraft pilots thought it wise not to tell their passengers if they thought it wouldn’t be fine.
The little Southern Command airstrip was as much as Valentine remembered it from his brief visit before. A small Southern Command flag on a pole, a big wind sock on an even taller one—practicality forcing military pride to bend.
“Didn’t anyone tell you? Sure the big fuzzies are under the protection of another Grog tribe. Only problem is, it’s Deathring Tribe.”
“Deathring?” Valentine asked. He’d heard the name somewhere or other back in the blurry memories of before he became a Wolf.
“They’re the pet tribe of the Iowa Guard,” Ahn-Kha said. “You and I encountered a few of their kind shortly after we met the Wrist-Ring Clan. Brass or bronze loops worn about the ear, neck, wrist, ankle, depends on the clan.”
“You forgot mean as a gutshot wolverine,” the sergeant put in. “Yeah, the poor Big Fuzzies—”
“Golden Ones is the correct term, Sergeant,” Valentine said.
“The Big Fuzzies,” the sergeant continued, “didn’t have much of a choice.”
“Sergeant, the Golden Ones saved my life. Call them Big Fuzzies one more time and I’ll be very angry,” Valentine said.
“General Martinez himself—”
“Isn’t here,” Valentine said. “But I’ll send him whatever part of you I chew off if you don’t start calling them Golden Ones.”
“Hey, Sergeant, he’s right,” a Wolf corporal said. “They did plenty of bleeding ’gainst those Iowa brownrings. Show them some respect.”
“Golden Ones, sir,” Sergeant Durndel said. “They got pinned against the Missouri. A couple swam for it, we have one here on the base cutting kindling and scrubbing pots and pans, matter-of-fact. We got orders to get rid of ’em, but we hide the Bi—Golden Ones when brass shows up.”
“What’s your name, Corporal?” Valentine said, turning to the other.
“James, sir. LaPorte T. Portly, to anyone who used to wear the deerskin. I mean yourself, sir.”
He was anything but portly, underneath a thick mane of dread-locks he looked as lean as a cheetah.
“Sorry, have we met?”
“No, but an old lieutenant of yours, Finner, he’s a captain now and he trained me. Told me about you and Big Rock Hill and all that. I’m proud to meet you.”
Big Rock Hill seemed an awful long time ago, especially when talking to a man who must have been shaving his first and only whisker when it happened.
“Thank you, Corporal James. If you’re in the mood to get out from under Sergeant Durndel’s eye for a week or two, you could take us up north.”
“Your friend there want to look up a relative?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, if it involves hunting a Reaper or knocking the Iowa Guard back to their corn silos, I’ll grab my clean underwear and rifle, sir. This gin rummy playacting war is for the legworms, if you know what I mean.”
Valentine didn’t know what Corporal James meant, but he soon found out over a plate of salted pork and some unusually decent carrot soup.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a malcontent or an insubordinate,” James said. “But since Martinez started running the show, the only time our rifles are out of their sheaths is for inspection, Major. The shoe leather and coats are better these days, and the food’s improved so much you might think we’re back home with Mama. I’ll give him this. General Martinez is crazy about food quality, he has every cook between Jasper and the Rio Grande shaking in his apron when his staff blows in. It’s better. No more runnin’ and gropin’.”
Valentine recognized the old Wolf slang for running for a bush and groping for something to wipe with.
“You can call me Val, James. When I’m off my feet, we can drop the formalities.”
“Well, there’s someone came in special to meet you, sir. Major Brostoff. Said he used to serve with you under LeHavre in Zulu Company. He’ll dock my ears if I keep you any longer, he’s looking forward to sitting down with a drink or six with you.”
CHAPTER NINE
Northern Missouri: The Iowa Kurians and Brass Rings, mindful of the importance of their fertile land and rail corridors, cannot put any more physical distance between themselves and Southern Command’s forces in the Ozarks, so they do the next best thing. They put difficulties in the path of any move north and do all they can to add to the psychological distance.
The first layer of their defense is the free Grogs. While a few clans have been subverted by Kurian agents to launch raids and counterraids against Southern Command’s forces—David Valentine experienced one in his last year as a Wolf—in order to keep bad blood between man and Gray One, most are doing what tribal communities always do. They tend their herds, gather their crops wild and planted, and guard their territory from all comers as fiercely as needs must.
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